


wait

by sunflowerbright



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Cecil has tattoos that move and a tail, Dorks in Love, M/M, Non-Binary Cecil, Other, Spoilers up to an including 'First Date', also mentions of his badass grandma, and a flirty cane, ftm!Carlos, kinda ties-in with 'daffodils in spring' since its still carlos being all insecure, only briefly mentioned though, warning tag for past transphobia and bullying, where was i?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2013-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-24 00:34:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/933029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowerbright/pseuds/sunflowerbright
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos has doubts. Cecil does their best to sooth them away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wait

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tangofox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tangofox/gifts).



> Birthday fic for the lovely Fox! I hope you have a great day, dear!

 

Cecil is staring at him again, and it is oddly discontenting, as much as the warmth that spreads over his face is kind if pleasant as well.

Carlos has always been someone who blushes easily, and he’s always been mortified every time he felt the heat in his cheeks, and the mortification at his own embarrassment had always just made him blush even more. Sometimes it would spread down his neck, and upwards as well, the very tips of his ears burning with shame.

This isn’t like that: when Cecil stares at him, there’s embarrassment, sure, a secret worry that eyes are set on his face to look for flaws, but there’s also a tingling down his spine, an excited rush running throughout his body.

Because Cecil looks at him like it’s not even an option to look away: or at least it’s not an option they ever want to entertain.

Still, doubts linger. There’d been his grandmother’s sweet words and a few others who have complimented his attire or his eyes or features in general, but there’s been even more to say something degrading and hurtful, verbal as well as literal punches.

 _Freak_ , they’d call him when he wore baggy clothes to hide his figure and changed his name. He hopes the echo of it comes back to haunt them sometimes, in their lone hours at night.

Carlos thinks, part of the reason he’s stayed in Night Vale for this long, is the likelihood that this will never happen – he’s been made fun of by Josie for the way he makes his toast, and for wearing socks that match, but never for personal preferences or the little glimpses of his past he’s revealed to her, kind as she is. She’d nodded as if she knew already, and the angel behind her had blinked with its many eyes, and Carlos had gotten the feeling that maybe it had told her. Maybe it knew.

The abnormal is absolutely normal in Night Vale, and Carlos won’t say that he feels completely at home yet, but then again, he didn’t either at his former home, and despite the miniature people trying to kill him, and the doubles and general massacres that occur, Carlos feels oddly safe in this strange little city.

And a part of it has to do with Cecil, because for all of it, even when he’d been lying half-dead with only the Apache Tracker for company, there’d still been Cecil’s voice in the background, Cecil worrying for him, Cecil crying because they might lose him now, Cecil, _Cecil, Cecil._

Just the sound of their name pushes many worries away, and Carlos thinks, he can put up with most of their eloquence about his looks being just teasing, as long as they’ll continue looking at him like that.

It’s easy then, with that in mind, to reach out and take Cecil’s hand in his, and it’s even more worth it when Cecil lets out a happy noise (not completely unlike the one Khoshekh makes when they feed him, but Carlos isn’t going to focus on that right now), and he can feel their tail flickering just above his shoulder, before settling around them very slowly, as if afraid Carlos is going to stop the movement any moment now: but he sits perfectly still and turns to smile at Cecil, the tail tightening and the radio host’s answering smile absolutely blinding.

It had been odd at first, the tail: not in a completely bad way, and certainly not more odd than the shifting and changing tattoos, or the cane with the wide, painted eye that sometimes winked suggestively at Carlos (or at least he was pretty sure it was suggestively, but it might just be him projecting), especially because the tail just seemed such an innate part of Cecil: they’d had it since birth, they told him on their first date, but the tattoos they’d gotten later: their right leg sometimes acting out and their resulting need of a cane hadn’t happened until later, although Cecil had still been very young. _“Around the same time that I got this,”_ Cecil had said to him, blinking once and letting the third eye on their forehead appear for a flicker of a second. Carlos had thought that it seemed like Night Vale took and gave in equal measure – or at least sometimes tried to do so.

The third eye is there sometimes when they look at Carlos as well, and he hopes it’s because they want to imprint as much of him as possible, just like he wants to trace his fingers along the surprisingly soft scales running from it and all the way up Cecil’s spine, ending just at the nape of their neck, the skin there almost black as night in the little dent where scale gives way to soft skin. He’d want to do the same with their tattoos, but they changed too many times for him to get a proper look at exactly what was where and how big, and what words, and wasn’t that written in Latin a moment ago, Cecil, why is there a lizard flicking out their tongue at me now instead?

 _“Maybe it wants to kiss you_ ,” Cecil had said, a blush darkening their skin high on their cheeks. _“Or maybe that’s just me?”_

The surprisingly not-horrible line had been accompanied by an audible gulp and an intensifying of the blush, and Carlos had laughed and obliged because Cecil made the best sounds when kissed, low and soft, and Carlos was getting fond of not only hands gripping him tightly, but that tail as well, surprisingly strong and comfortable.

He wants to drown in Cecil, he thinks, and it worries him. It’s not something he would usually think, usually do. Carlos didn’t do high emotions like this, had shed the skin of a scared child long ago, in order to become someone who cared about Facts and Figures and yes, was passionate about those Facts and Figures, but that was in order for it all to _make sense_ dammit. It’s easier to just not get involved with people when there were so many complications to explain, so many factors, so many labels to apply in situations, and in the end, it just plain hadn’t been worth it.

Facts and Figures have no real value in Night Vale, no real consistency. It should be enough to drive him mad and drive him out of town, drive him right back home, but he’d _stayed_ , and it was equal parts curiosity and determination as it was a soft voice on the radio speaking about him like he was a gift from the gods, and dammit if it hadn’t gotten to Carlos, even when he knew no-one _really_ thought like that.

“Is something wrong?” Cecil’s voice pulls him out of his thoughts, their tail flickering nervously now, the tip brushing the edges of his hair. Speaking of.

“Nah,” he said. “I’m just thinking.”

Cecil shifts slightly closer – they’re sitting on a couch in Carlos’ living-room, and there isn’t much closer to shift, but they both try their best anyway.

“About what?”

“About when I first came here,” Carlos says, smiling slightly. “And how much you’d tease me.”

Cecil looks confused now, arms wrapping around him as well now, to join the tail. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you know,” he falters a bit: he hadn’t expected that he’d have to explain himself on this. “I mean…”

“I was far too taken with you to _tease you_ ,” their eyes widen suddenly, and Cecil looks almost horrified. “You weren’t… I didn’t _insult you_ , did I? Oh all the gods above and below, I didn’t make you feel _unwelcome,_ right?!”

“No, no,” Carlos hurries to say, and then stops himself and hesitates. “Well… maybe not exactly unwelcome, it was just…”

Cecil lets out a noise like a cat slowly dying, and it makes Carlos jump, even as they move slightly away from him, arms now free and tail loosening its hold – Carlos misses the touch instantly, but he doesn’t say or do anything as Cecil puts a bit more space between them.

“I am _so sorry_ ,” Cecil says, third eye flickering as their horror deepens, and Carlos thinks this situation is getting a little out of hand. “What was it I said? What did I do?! Oh no, are you part of the Addam Addams religion and I’m not supposed to make any mentions of hair? Oh, why didn’t you say anything earlier, _I am so sorry, I never should have just presumed, I_ …”

“Cecil!” Carlos has to yell to be heard over the blabber, but Cecil immediately shuts up and looks at him with such large and yearning eyes that it makes Carlos’s heart ache.

“It’s fine,” he says, lowering his voice and doing his best to sound patient. “I’m not a member of… that particular religion, or any religion really, and you haven’t offended me, you haven’t done anything bad, really, I just… sometimes I get a bit too overtly sensitive about things that, you know, regular people can just joke around about? And I do realise it was just that, that you like to tease me, and I shouldn’t take it so seriously, but I do, I’m sorry, it’s a part of me that I need to get better at, I think.”

He thinks he’s explained it somewhat, but Cecil still looks horrified, and now also confused, like a sad little puppy he accidentally kicked when he was reaching out to pet it.

“But I haven’t been teasing you,” Cecil says then, in this small voice like someone being accused of a horrendous crime they were innocent of, and something inside Carlos falls and crashes, and he isn’t entirely sure if the sudden lightness in his head and entire body is a good thing or a bad thing.

The elation seems pretty good.

“You mean that… you _meant_ all those things you said?” his mouth is so dry he can hardly get the words out, and his heart has started beating slightly faster. Cecil frowns.

“Of course?” Cecil sounds so confused, and Carlos would think about how adorable it is, if it wasn’t because his brain is currently short-circuiting. “You thought I was teasing you?! All this time?”

“You called me beautiful and perfect,” Carlos gets out, and surprises himself by not stammering over the words. “Every time you’d talk about me you’d be gushing like a teenager with a crush and I just… I mean, I’m a very good authority on myself, so I just figured…”

He trails off, because something slightly dark has fallen over Cecil’s face now, like shadows just climbing around the edges: there’s a tattoo moving into view at his throat, black ink in shapes he can’t identify, writhing along the muscles and tendons and veins there. Carlos thinks it would be normal to be frightened of them – but he can’t imagine Cecil ever harming him, and he finds himself merely fascinated.

“People haven’t usually said that about you?” Cecil asks, and Carlos does stutter this time, slightly, when he informs Cecil that it has been quite the opposite (and he isn’t throwing a pity-party, but he isn’t going to lie either). Cecil suddenly looks _absolutely furious_ , only letting it give way to something like determination: Carlos hardly has time to blink before they’re climbing into his lap.

“They must be blind where you come from,” Cecil tells him, and Carlos’ heart leaps into his throat, stops any words of protest from forming, letting him only make strangled noises of delight as Cecil presses down on him. “They must have lost all their senses.”

“I’m…”

“You’re beautiful,” Cecil tells him, fingers slipping into his hair. Carlos can’t look away. “You’re so talented and _smart_ and kind and brave, and your hair curls _just_ like it should and you have dimples when you smile, and your eyes are so constantly warm I think I’m melting sometimes, and I don’t care what anyone else thinks, because I saw you and then I _knew_ , and I wasn’t teasing you, not about that, I don’t know how to find the words, and I can’t believe you didn’t take me seriously.”

“I’m sorry,” Carlos gets out, though Cecil doesn’t seem frustrated with him as much as with themself.

“No,” Cecil says then, “No, no, no, _I_ screwed up, but I was just too shy so I talked about you where I wasn’t completely sure you would hear but where I was hoping you would anyway, because Carlos, dear sweet Carlos, you are _so perfect,_ and what would you ever even want with me?”

It’s his turn to tuck Cecil close now, pulling until they’re pressed flush against each other. “You’re being silly now,” he says, and Cecil’s face lights up like its Christmas.

Christmas back in Carlos’ hometown though. Christmas in Night Vale is quite a gruesome affair from what he’s heard. But he doesn’t get to think much more of that, because then there are warm lips pressed against his, leaving only to whisper things like _beautiful_ and _perfect_ and _wondrous_ , of all things, and Carlos thinks, _oh, you really weren’t teasing_ , and the warmth between them washes the last of the doubt away.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [This](http://fiercejolras.tumblr.com/post/58527177575/please-just-let-me-tell-someone-about-my-native) is my headcanon for Cecil if you want to know more about how I see them


End file.
